** The Dead Biologist**
Suppose you're a biologist working with a bacterium. It's a nasty little bug, so you want to make sure your disinfecting protocol is effective. You have a rather good model of how the bacterium works, and it goes like this:
- The bacterium contains DNA, which is like a master copy of the instructions as to how it works
- This DNA is transcribed to RNA, which are little working copies of parts of the instructions and are disseminated throughout the bacterium
- This RNA is translated into proteins, which actually do the stuff that makes the bacterium function
Yes, there are a few special cases where RNA actually does something, and your model seems to be missing some things---for one, the amount of protein produced from each RNA molecule seems to vary, and you can only account for about 90% of this variance; the other 10% appears [...]
Outline:
(00:09) The Dead Biologist
(01:33) The Thing in the Noise
(03:29) Heavy Pressure
(04:30) Almost-All is not All
(05:42) The Most Forbidden Technique
(06:40) Beyond Imperfect Models
(07:41) Coda
The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
First published:
June 25th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gk3wj6mNWMACQDdZQ/lurking-in-the-noise)
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO).
